King's Gifts: Massive Minus to Hide/MS

[Maxwell Artfall]

It seems like with all the other changes to the King's Gift possession being oriented toward ensuring this doesn't happen, it might be something of an oversight that stealthed characters can pick up the King's Gift (which breaks stealth) and then use either darkness, invisibility, or vanishing smoke to immediately return to stealth. With some characters having considerable hide and move silently it can almost guarantee victory in most cases without being involved in the dispensary combat at all, which I believe all previous King's Gift changes such as breaking stealth, briefly removing invisibility, encumbering weight, and default slow seem to be oriented to prevent.

My suggestion would be either a code that cancels stealth mode every few rounds while in possession of the King's Gifts, or introduces a massive minus to hide and move silently such as -50 while in possession of the gifts.

[Easy To Remember]

I'd agree with this.

[Random_White_Guy]

This seems to cycle through every time a PC or two swipes the king's gifts and all the more martially inclined PCs get duped

I'm unequivocally against this as EFU has almost 0% opportunity for burglary or theft without direct DM intervention and that can be a total pain in the ass to just be like "hey DM can I have some of your time I want to steal X thing because i'm a roguish jewel thief".

Crime in EFU is more or less parsed down to "Get a DM" or "Bandit PvP joe the random PC". There's not a lot of instances for legitimate scripted theft, and the Dispensary one of the few chances where a Rogue can be clever and really shine. Sparks of Revelation can be found IG, bought from specific NPCs in Ticker Square, bought from Tinkering PCs. C&C potions, Hearing Potions, and more can be bought, the spells can be cast, scrolls exist.

Getting high enough stealth to burgle something surrounded by 10+ PCs takes a lot of investment in skills, equipment, and similar.

It's also a huge thrilling risk, which makes it really fun for the chaotic bois out there. My Thief PC pickpocketing 6 PCs at the Dispensary then scampering off with the goods was one of my favorite things in the new chapter i've ever done as a crook.

[Anonymous Lemur]

Well the banner spits gold magic glowing dust everywhere and is a giant golden flag so maybe it's best if it did lower stealth scores a little. Plus stealthing away is a lot more boring than fighting. Might give a little thrill to the stealther, but everyone watching and everyone fighting gets the short end of the enjoyment factor.

[divine holy blood, blood]

It's not above the realm of reason that the King who imposes magic on his gifts in order to force the denizens of the rings to fight over them would not impose a similar magic effect in order to further enforce this.

I agree.

[Octarine]

I am quite confident that it does have a pretty substantial negative to hide and move silently. But it does seem that an easy win like that might be frustrating for all involved.

[rats back on the menu]

It already gives a big penalty to stealth.   It doesn't take much of a penalty to make a person trivial to spot, given how low-average the total stealth potential is. 

[Necro]

Given it apparently already gives penalties, the issue sounds more like some folks might wanna consider spot or listen an actual skill, stealth takes investment, so should spotting those stealthed

[HeWhoSeeks]

It seems like with all the other changes to the King's Gift possession being oriented toward ensuring this doesn't happen, it might be something of an oversight that stealthed characters can pick up the King's Gift (which breaks stealth) and then use either darkness, invisibility, or vanishing smoke to immediately return to stealth. With some characters having considerable hide and move silently it can almost guarantee victory in most cases without being involved in the dispensary combat at all, which I believe all previous King's Gift changes such as breaking stealth, briefly removing invisibility, encumbering weight, and default slow seem to be oriented to prevent.

My suggestion would be either a code that cancels stealth mode every few rounds while in possession of the King's Gifts, or introduces a massive minus to hide and move silently such as -50 while in possession of the gifts.

Vanishing smoke is typically very useless.
Darkness - buff yourself with ultravision.
Invisibility, use see invisibility.

These are all supplies the offended party has to use to get away, or to play sneakily. Why not carry sparks of revelation for when you crush a dispensary and want to be sure?